Lithograph
showing Newark Avenue near Waldo and Magnolia Avenues. Until it was cut
down in 1871, an ancient tulip tree known as the
"King of the Woods" stood on the brow of the hill overlooking
the site of the Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery.
General Lafayette was said to have encamped under the shade of this tree
in 1779.Harriet
Phillips Eaton. Jersey
City and Its Historic Sites.
Jersey City, NJ: Women's
Club of Jersey City of Jersey City, 1899.

"The Jersey City and Harsimus
Cemetery, incorporated in 1831, reflects a transition between the colonial graveyards and the garden cemeteries of the Rural Cemetery Movement. The cemetery encompassed design features from both types of burial grounds but never fully embraced one or the other." This interpretation of the historical significance of New Jersey's first incorporated cemetery is advanced by Mark Nonestied in his article "Burial Reform at the Jersey City & Harsimus Cemetery," GardenStateLegacy.com, June 2011).

Located on five
and one-half acres south of Newark Avenue, the cemetery site dates back to the Revolutionary War when the General
Marquis de Lafayette and British forces clashed in 1780. The grounds were
also used as an ammunition bunker and lookout point during the War of
1812 and later for military training during World Wars I and II. The hills of the cemetery may have sheltered tunnels in Jersey City's Underground Railroad operation for the freeing of slaves.

The origins for the cemetery, it is claimed, came in 1829 after local residents
refused to pay a $12 charge to open a plot purchased
in the historic Old Bergen
Church Cemetery. They wished to bury an unidentified man whose body
was found on the shore off Paulus
Hook. The money for the plot and marker was collected, but
when the sexton requested the additional fee they refused. Concern about recent cholera epidemics in New Jersey, such as in nearby Bayonne, may have led to the additional burial fee. A meeting held at
Hugh McCutcheon's Farmers' Hotel at 42 York Street resulted in a decision to form a cemetery company and eliminate the need to use the church burial ground at Bergen.
The new cemetery was incorporated on February 9, 1831. David
Cadwallader Colden, son of Cadwallader Colden, the mayor of New York City and one of the investors
in the Associates
of the Jersey Company, became the president of the board of trustees. The historic Gatekeeper House dates back to the year of the cemetery's incorporation.

Nonestied writes that William F. Bridges surveyed the cemetery using ". . . a grid system with 18 foot by 18 foot family plots and 12 foot by 18 foot vault lots that were divided by the main cemetery road, 12 foot cartways and 6 foot pathways. The total number of lots was 347 . . . ." Subscribers purchased lots for $20 each with a $5 down payment and they as owners elected a board of trustees. This concept, notes Nonestied "gave the lot holders the authority to elect a board that would manage and govern the cemetery" away from ecclesiastical control. Delinquencies in subscriber payments, however, handicapped the board with the upkeep of the grounds.

By the 1850s, the Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery had begun to include the new features of the Rural Cemetery Movement with landscaping of trees, plants and flowers, an iron gate, retail greenhouse and caretaker's house. Like other garden-style cemeteries, it became a destination for visitors to view the plantings and monuments. Nonestied notes, ". . . visitors had become such a problem that they were soon required to procure tickets for admission." The location of the cemetery at Bergen Hill permitted the construction of vaults as well as elaborate monuments. "The receiving vault . . . initially started as three private family vaults, built in the 1830s for the Colgate family," remarks Nonestied. William Colgate, founder of the Colgate's Soap
and Perfumery Works, later Colgate-Palmolive Peet, was one of the first subscribers, but the family members were later reinterred at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The
family members of Isaac Edge are buried in a brownstone vault in the cemetery.

According to
Colin Egan, "From its inception the cemetery has served the people
of downtown Jersey City and bears witness to the area's changing ethnic
make-up." There are markers for the descendants of early Dutch and English settlers like Jacob Van
Riper and May Rood Drayton. Monuments also give witness to the numbers of Germans, Russians, Polish and Italians, who arrived in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Among the markers, the oldest is
that of Andrew Gammell, who died June 22, 1830. The burial grounds contain
the graves of many Civil War soldiers. Nonestied notes that the popularity of the Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery began to wane as early as the 1850s with the founding of the New York Bay Cemetery, "a garden style burial ground." He also comments that, in an attempt to compete for space and profitability, "In 1876, the [Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery] burial ground was resurveyed and all unsold family plots were converted to single plots." The sale of plots continued through the twentieth century.

In 1955, the Hudson
Dispatch printed an article on the 126th anniversary of the cemetery
and commented about its status in the city: "Stretching out like
a huge octopus with the passing years, the city has all but enveloped
that once quiet and secluded section. To the north and west, city streets
entwine the cemetery, and to the south the Pennsylvania Railroad has
right-of-way. Still free on the east, however, it is bordered by Mary
Benson Park, a favorite recreation spot for children." Its location may have limited expansion, but it otherwise fulfills one of the purposes of the Rural Cemetery Movement to keep cemeteries away from areas of potential industrial development. The cemetery nonetheless has served the community "to provide a fit and proper burial place" (quoted in Nonestied) for its departed.

The Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery continuestoday under
the supervision of an independent board of trustees reorganized in 2007 for the purpose of preserving this local landmark. It received popular attention when it was used for the filming of several episodes of the HBO-TV series The Sopranos.